Jo Swinson has abandoned liberalism

There was plenty to criticise about Jo Swinson’s speech to the Lib Dem party conference yesterday. Her bold decision to sign up to a manifesto that commits the party to revoking Article 50 on day one of a majority Lib Dem administration could alienate hitherto sympathetic Tory Remainers in crucial target seats in the South of England. If the Lib Dems find themselves as a junior coalition partner and have to roll back on their manifesto position, that could damage the party’s credibility. Swinson surely does not need to be reminded of the cost to the party of her predecessor Nick Clegg’s decision to sign up to a pre-election pledge to freeze tuition fees, on which he could not possibly deliver in a coalition administration.

And her views on social policy seem to be little more than reheated Cameroon-ism: for “Happiness Index”, now read “wellbeing budget”.

In many other ways, the speech represented a missed opportunity. Swinson could instead have married together the energy that Brexit has given the Lib Dems, their marked success in the European elections earlier this year, and the swelling of their ranks with new MPs dissatisfied with the legacy parties, and combined all these elements with a historic sense of liberal mission.

British Liberalism was and is a great tradition – shown in part by the way in which Liberal policies have been successfully adopted and developed by both the Tory Party and by Labour. Progressive extensions of the franchise find their modern equivalent in constitutional reform for the regions and for England, for example, or indeed, in the fight against the belittlement of our democracy under the influence of “big tech”.

But if our leading liberal party is at a point of its historical trajectory where offcuts from Cameron’s Big Society are seen as a substitute for genuine liberal goals (Cameron, although extremely bright, was no inspired intellectual), it is unworthy of the movement it claims as its own.

It was in Swinson’s final few remarks that she seemed to adopt a register wildly at odds with proper liberal sensibilities:

“At the next general election, voters will choose the kind of country we want to be. Insular, closed, and selfish. Or collaborative, open and generous. A politics of fear, hate and division. Or one of respect, hope and inclusion.

“Liberal Democrats, we can build the broad, open, liberal movement that our country needs. We can defeat nationalism and populism.”

Her face darkened dramatically over “insular, closed and selfish” then lit up, with her lips folded into a smile, over “collaborative, open and generous”. Cue scowl for “fear, hate and division”; cue cheery smile for “respect, hope and inclusion.”

This kitschy rhetorical manoeuvre ditches all pretence to liberal sensibility as it has previously been understood.

Historically, the liberal mind is characterised by a profound apprehension that the realm of politics is essentially a tragic sphere, in which human beings find themselves thrown into conflicts determined by forces they cannot choose, and conceptions of the collective good that founder on the frailty of individuals and the variety of their hopes and desires: a political realm that grew out of our experience of wars and the terrifying salience of mutant revolutionary ideologies like socialism and fascism in the early twentieth century.

This is precisely what Swinson and her simplistic followers trash – the notion that the world cannot be compassed by any single ethical ideal, Remain or Leave. Indeed, a true liberal finds consolation in the view that life is a confusing patchwork, stitched in all kinds of fabric, and dyed in a great variety of colours, by all kinds of people.

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